


be good to your daughters

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: Tales from the Shelterverse [3]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, mothersanddaughters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They came to Kirkwall. And the last traces of her bright eyed, lighthearted girl had disappeared behind this mocking, cool stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be good to your daughters

**Author's Note:**

> _Leandra POV, just after recruiting Fenris in Act I. Thanks to mille libri for the excellent beta work, though all errors are my own. Title from John Mayer's song. Yeah, I know._

"Maker, Beth. Enough."

 

"But you did. You agreed with him!"

 

Aeryn eyed her sister and replied drily. "Yes. I can't imagine what came over me."

 

"What are you two arguing about?" Leandra looked up from the rickety table she’d monopolized as her writing desk, where she'd been composing yet another letter appealing to the Viscount. Aeryn was distant, her face composed and bored as she leaned against the wall to pull off her boots. Bethany looked like she might cry.

 

"Mother, make her apologize!" Leandra stared at her youngest incredulously. When was the last time she'd made her eldest daughter do anything?

 

Ah, yes. They came to Kirkwall. And the last traces of her bright eyed, lighthearted girl had disappeared behind this mocking, cool stranger. But she did usually attempt to be kind with Bethany. "What's happened?"

 

"I agreed with someone that if I kept hanging about with mages, I was going to end up in trouble." Aeryn sounded faintly amused and Leandra started to laugh, but Bethany interrupted.

 

"He called me a viper!"

 

Their mother turned back to her eldest with a question in her eyes. Aeryn shrugged. Of all the changes wrought in her elder daughter, it was this that bothered Leandra the most, how what once had been humor would turn sharp and draw blood. Did she really think, now, that Bethany's magic was dangerous?

 

"He's an elf escaped from Tevinter slavers. I imagine magic's not high on his list of good qualities. And I'm pretty sure he mainly meant Anders."

 

"Oh." Malcolm had always told Leandra that it was Tevinter cruelty that caused the most trouble in the fight for equality. The Empire’s reputation for bloodmagic and cruelty bled over into mages everywhere. If they had encountered an ex-slave it wasn’t surprising if he was prejudiced against magic. But that Aeryn agreed with him?

 

"You just did it because he's pretty!" Aeryn's slightly predatory grin sent Leandra's eyebrows soaring.

 

"Well, that massive sword was a draw, too."

 

"Aeryn!"

 

"Greatsword, Mother. Handy in a fight."

 

"Honestly. The company you keep is making you coarse." The smile was gone as if Leandra had thrown a sheet over her, back to cool and bland. This was a mask Leandra had taught her daughter, a noblewoman's refuge, but she'd never expected it to be turned on her.

 

"Of course. I apologize. To both of you. Excuse me, ladies." Aeryn dropped a curtsey, grabbed her boots and left the hovel.

 

Leandra followed her to the door, but her daughter was gone, quick as a whip, disappearing into the gloomy late afternoon with an ease that frightened her mother. All sorts of hard new tricks Aeryn had developed in the last year, but shadows had always come easily to her. She'd spent three frantic hours one morning searching for her six year old girl only to discover her in the darker corner of the hut they'd been renting outside of Highever. "I was right here, Mama. I thought we were playing a game. You, me and the shadows!" With a sweet gap toothed smile and big wide eyes. Malcolm had laughed when he came in and tossed her high before setting her back on her feet.

 

"Going to be a grand little bard someday, aren't you, my lovely?" She'd nodded and twirled with uncanny grace in her bow. Always small, she never seemed to go through an awkward stage.

 

"Just like the Black Rose and Katriel, Father. Running messages for the king and stealing secret plans from the wicked Orlesians!" He'd chuckled, swinging her up to toss her again and she giggled.

 

"Oh, Malcolm..." But a baby's impatient squall had broken her impulse to rebuke Malcolm for inspiring their daughter to tricks and thievery. And then, one day, not long after Bethany had set Carver's wooden sword afire in revenge after he'd scalped her doll, the little knives came.

 

"She's got to learn to defend herself, Leandra.” Malcolm had explained. “Ferelden isn't noble Kirkwall and I'm no titled lord to raise her daintily and marry her off to a protector. She's never going to be big enough for heavy swords and you have to admit, she's a natural." They had watched Aeryn flick three of the light throwing knives towards a target. Two of them completed rotation and stuck. It was no hardship to have laughed and applauded at her grin and her high court curtsey. It hadn't been a month before Aeryn hit the full set more often than not. The daggers that appeared a year or so later hadn't seemed out of place.

 

Leandra stared out into the greying street, an echo of girlish laughter in her inner ear. The wind was picking up again. Another squall due. Bethany came up behind her and sat a warm hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Mother. I didn't mean to set her off." Leandra let her youngest draw her back into the hovel. "She likely just went to see Varric, anyway. Blow off a little steam with darts and a pint."

 

Leandra sat and allowed Bethany to set up tea.

 

That her daughter had become accustomed to frequenting taverns was a moot point. The fact that the dive was a step up from her haunts of the last year was worse. And it probably wasn't a dart game Aeryn had gone to lose herself in. Leandra had no illusions about Aeryn's innocence any longer.

 

She had looked away, only briefly it seemed, and her scoundrel in pigtails had turned into a woman without a by your leave. Aeryn had carried herself with a woman's knowledge of her body since well before she left for the king's army, sometimes so naturally sensual she made her mother blush. Not vulgar, though gazes followed and Aeryn lured them on, sly eyes and a wry smile and that sway in her walk that never came from Leandra, raised to be demure. But not yet with any emotion behind her smirk, either.

 

Leandra had heard Aeryn and Bethany chatter about boys in Lothering, especially once Bethany had bloomed. Bethany had a romantic vision of a gentle knight while Aeryn had been openly speculative aboutthe cut of their trousers. And when Leandra worked up the nerve to ask she'd gotten a "Nothing but a bit of fun, Mother." And that's all it ever seemed to be. There'd never been a broken hearted sigh from her eldest, never a mooning, lovesick pine. Just fun.

 

Leandra had brought it up once with her village friend, Miriam, who had shrugged and said plainly,"There's those that fall in love with every change of the wind. There's those that're picky and the ones that just don't have it in them to love. And the ones that will only love once. I imagine Aeryn is one of those. Intense, that gal of yours, for all she's a scamp."

 

Not long after that, she'd seen Aeryn standing on the porch of the village shop eyeing a new Templar who was aiding a Chantry sister with her shopping. At first Leandra had thought it was only the young man's fine jawline and the hazel eyes until... she saw it. A cold, calculating flicker when Aeryn had glanced back at Bethany, who was browsing through the fabrics on display. A shift of her shoulders, hunching and then setting, stiffly just before she relaxed into a prowl aimed at crossing the man's path. The small, private nod as if telling herself something, agreeing to something. Leandra had called to her on reflex, as if something frightening had just crossed her daughter's shadow and given Leandra a frantic need to gather her close.

 

Aeryn had turned sharply, with resentment in her pale gray eyes, but she'd come home willing enough. After Leandra checked on Malcolm, who had stayed home with a headache, they started supper. They had been slicing turnips amicably at the farmhouse table, Bethany and Carver out milking, and Leandra decided. Swallowing hard she'd spoken. "I know that perhaps your Father and I have made love look...hard. As though it were too much trouble to bother with. But it's all been worth it, my darling. Please believe me. Love...true love is infinitely precious. Don't wager with it. It's too easy to make it...a commodity. Something easy to bargain with."

 

"Promise me, Aeryn. Promise me you won't ever lie about love."

 

Those grey eyes had flashed again and for a moment she thought her daughter would laugh and dismiss her mother's meddling. But, then her sharp little chin had ducked. She'd drawn in her shoulders, again, protecting herself. And she'd nodded, slowly, looking up through the bangs of her recently cut hair…and oh, Leandra mourned that long, dark red hair. So like her own mother’s. "Alright, Mama. I promise." Aeryn hadn't called her "mama" since before Lothering, when Malcolm had bought Aeryn’s daggers and she'd stepped away from being a little girl. The promise hadn't seemed to slow Aeryn down, really. But she'd never gone again towards a Templar. Never again had Leandra seen that cold calculation turned towards a man like a hard bargain. She thought perhaps that she'd managed to see soon enough to save her girl one last time, but Kirkwall had made plain that Leandra had missed too much, somehow.

Aeryn never talked about boys now. She listened, sympathetic and cautioning, to Bethany's not quite innocent crushing on that apostate friend of theirs, Anders. She grinned wolfishly now and again over a comment Aveline would make. No names ever crossed her lips, though. No giggles in the night between the girls. Leandra didn't recall the last time Aeryn had giggled. However, Leandra wasn't so old that she didn't recognize the smell of sex and the occasional sultry stretch.

 

When Malcolm died, he'd left her with a too wise older daughter and a pair of half grown twins, one of whom was a half trained mage, and a reasonably productive farm. When he heaped the burden of them all on Aeryn's slim shoulders, Leandra had been too grief stricken to object. Then she'd been injured, cut her arm on a scythe and by the time she'd recuperated, the Hawke household had been firmly in the grip of Aeryn's small hand, her clear duty, shoulders stronger already.

Only now and again, Leandra saw a glimpse of something wild and scared and starved in her daughter's eyes.

The month before Aeryn lit out for the army, she saw it. They'd been afraid that the Marddyn boy might report Bethany after he'd frightened her behind the granary after a festive shucking dance. But it had been a last hurrah, it seemed, as he'd apparently joined a mercenary band on its way to Gwaren.

One of Malcolm's old collegues had dropped by, ostensibly to check on Bethany's progress. It turned out he wanted more than that, he'd succumbed to the lure of bloodmagic and wanted Bethany as a pet, an apprentice. Aeryn had had to...she looked at her daughter's weapons chest in the corner. She'd killed the man. And when Leandra had tried to sympathize, to comfort, Aeryn had seemed surprised and shrugged. "Father told me I might have to, Mother. I was prepared to do it. Whatever it takes to protect our Beth." She hadn't smiled, as if she considered it would be inappropriate.

Whatever it takes. Leandra had felt very old that day. She had killed to protect her family, to protect Malcolm, distantly with the bow that had been a lady's whim in Kirkwall. Fashionable to follow in the Rebel Queen's footprints. But even so, she’d wept in Malcolm’s arms over it. It had seemed wrong that Aeryn wasn't more upset. A sudden chill in her heart had made her ask. "Aeryn, did...did Evan Marddyn... He didn't go to Gwaren, did he?"

There it had been; that look, gone so fast that Leandra dismissed it, then. She'd blinked wide eyes at her mother, her face pale and still. "Maker, Mother. What do you think I am?" There had been a choke in her voice. "I grew up with Evan, Mother. I danced with him that night! How could I hurt him?"

"Oh, Aeryn, I'm sorry, I just...worry. Your father didn't mean that you should take death lightly. He didn't teach you those skills to make you a killer."

"Of course not, Mother! Just when it's necessary."

Necessity is an odd shaped peg. Sometimes it fits too many holes. Aeryn had said in her note that it was necessary that she join the army, too. That she was needed. And then it was necessary to leave Carver on the road, with only one of Bethany's fire spells and a hasty prayer from a stranger to wing him to the Maker. And then it was necessary to work for the Red Iron, every night coming home with eyes even emptier and a smile ever sharper. To stay out all night, to come home smelling of blood and sex and liquor. And now it was taking every job she could to scrape coin.

Aeryn prowled back to the hovel in the grey dawn with a flush high on her cheeks and a loose, languid note in her walk, twirling a new knife. Leandra had fallen asleep, waiting, slumped over her writing desk.

 

Leaning over to press a kiss to her mother's temple, Aeryn whispered, "Shouldn't wait on me, Mother. Sometimes a job will run late. You know that." She smelled of salt air and cider, musk and...incense? There was a lovebite on the spot where her neck joined her shoulder. And, Leandra noticed, startled, lipstain on the edge of her tunic in a shade Aeryn never wore.

 

"I wanted to ask if you could accompany us to Chant tom...later today?"

 

Aeryn nodded, slowly. "Of course. Though, there seemed to be a bit of fuss there earlier, so let's go to late morning service." Not even a roll of her eyes. That was interesting.

 

"Will it be a bother?"

 

"No." She noticed her mother's curiosity a bit late, staring at the floor in a considering manner as she leaned boneless against the crumbling plaster of the wall. So, yes. More than a pint. "One of the priests has a notice up. I want to check him out before I take the job."

 

"Why would a priest need a, ah, your sort of help?"

Aeryn cocked her eyebrow at her mother's evasion of her skill. It evoked Malcolm so that Leandra's heart clutched.

"Something to do with a death in his family, I think." She stood and stretched, fluid as a cat, "I'll catch a nap and be ready by nine bells."

Leandra watched her pull back the curtain that divided their sleeping area from the front room and light-footedly enter, trying not to wake Bethany. She would light a candle, today. Light a candle for her little girl, who had disappeared one morning and left this woman behind. And perhaps another for the man somewhere who might love her, anyway.


End file.
